Alex Cunningham: I will, of course, oppose this Bill because it provides yet more evidence of an elitist approach to the education of our young people. This Tory-led Government are out of touch with teachers, with parents and with students.
	I get sick and tired of people doing down our young people and their very real achievements, when we should be celebrating with them and praising and encouraging them to do better. They should be able to thrive, doing the things that they do best within a balanced curriculum. Yet at Education questions yesterday, the Secretary of State proudly promoted his narrow 1950s vision of what our education system should look like. His attachment to dead languages such as Latin is worrying. As Secretary of State, he has a responsibility to create a flexible education system that caters for all students-he is failing in that responsibility.
	The proposals for the "English baccalaureate" are a backward step, which sends our young people the message that only traditional academic subjects hold any value. Instead of telling young people what subjects they should be studying, the Secretary of State should be giving them the freedom to pursue the subjects that they are passionate about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) rightly questioned, how can the Secretary of State proclaim that Latin is more important than information technology in the 21st century?
	About 50% of our young people do not plan to go to university, and I think that number is going to grow as the tuition fees rises are brought into place. We have brilliant universities in this country, including the excellent Teesside and Durham universities, and the young people who aspire to attend university should be encouraged to do so. A university education, however, is not the be-all and end-all, because other things are happening in further education. We must be careful not to send the wrong message to our young people, many of whom work incredibly hard and are rightly proud of their achievements-irrespective of whether or not they reach university.
	This Bill contains measures that give the Secretary of State free rein to set uncapped and commercial rates of interest on student loans. The thousands of students who marched passed my office as part of the protests against the rise in tuition fees are learning government lessons the hard way, and it will be their successors who know that we are not "all in it together".
	Youth unemployment is at an all-time high. One in five of our young people are out of work. The Tory-led Government are in danger of creating a lost generation of young people, so why does this Bill repeal Labour's apprenticeship guarantee? With current levels of youth unemployment, we should be doing everything we can to help young people succeed in education and training. Over and again, we hear the mantra, "We're all in this together"-but not according to the large numbers of young people in my constituency who have e-mailed me, angry at the way their generation is being targeted by this Tory-led Government. They are most particularly concerned about the move to scrap education maintenance allowance-another broken promise to add to the list.
	There is much to criticise in this Bill, but I want to move on to focus on the Secretary of State's pet project of free schools. The Government's free schools initiative has serious implications for secondary education in the Stockton borough. Last week, the Secretary of State visited Stockton to announce he had given the go-ahead for an initial plan for a free school in my neighbouring constituency of Stockton South. In my former life as a local councillor in Stockton, I was the cabinet member for children and young people, so I know this is a very difficult local issue.
	Ingleby Barwick is a modern and growing housing development, with only one secondary school. Many hundreds of local children have to travel a few miles to get to school. Parents in Ingleby Barwick have campaigned for years for another secondary school, but if they are successful the implications will be problematic. Conyers and Egglescliffe schools-both excellent local secondary schools-rely on pupils from Ingleby Barwick to keep their numbers up. At least one of these schools serves children from my constituency and would have to close if the Secretary of State were to approve a new school in Ingleby Barwick.
	If the free school proposal goes ahead, which other schools will suffer, and perhaps even close, as a result? That is what I and affected communities in my constituency want to know. I cannot understand how the Government can allow any school proposal to go ahead without consideration of the local authority strategy for schools. In Stockton the strategy provided for a massive expansion of All Saints school in the middle of Ingleby Barwick, which could have been facilitated without the investment that will be needed if the free school proposal is to go ahead. That idea was ditched by the Secretary of State when he axed Building Schools for the Future.
	It is important for parents to have influence over local schools, but free schools will undermine local authorities. I am concerned about the impact that the free schools initiative will have across the Stockton borough as communities and schools are pitted against each other. When it comes to the free schools policy, for every winner there will be an even bigger loser.
	The Bill requires the expenditure of hundreds of millions of pounds that would surely be better spent on supporting existing schools. The Secretary of State is preoccupied with his structural changes to the education system, while neglecting what teachers and parents care about most: the provision of the best possible education and training for all our young people, not just the most academically able. Contrary to what the Secretary of State claimed, in my area children across the education system did considerably better over the past 13 years than over the previous 10. We need to work with our schools and local authorities to achieve even greater success, rather than setting school against school. Let us build on success, not abandon it.

Richard Bacon: My hon. Friend is right because the uncertainty is already proving damaging, particularly on the language issue, as I will discuss in a second. In East Anglia, we see around us the huge potential for a new rebalanced economy that places relatively less emphasis on financial services and has growth in all these other sectors. We have the potential for a golden triangle between Cambridge, Norwich and Ipswich, where BT Martlesham has its own electrical generating capacity, because it uses more electricity for computing power than many small towns.
	Where is the role of the universities in all this? It is nothing short of crucial. As the Minister knows, we need more skilled people-all Governments talk about the need for more skills. Our education system produces far too many people who are not equipped to go further, which was the subject of this afternoon's Second Reading debate. Some people cannot study at university, because they do not have the basics in English, maths and science. We have a shortage of science and maths teachers, which is being made worse by a vicious circle: not enough students reaching the basic standard; not enough students studying those subjects at A-level; not enough good people therefore applying to university to study those subjects; and accordingly not enough graduates to become teachers to help solve the problem.
	What is helping to break that vicious circle? The answer is overseas students. In many STEM subjects-science, technology, engineering and mathematics-courses are viable only due to the substantial proportion of enrolments from outside the UK and the EU. If we get all this wrong, we will damage the possibility of our economy recovering and rebalancing away from an over-dependence on financial services. One need only look to the United States to see the enormously important role of a vibrant university sector in driving economic growth.
	In 2009, a study by the Kauffman Foundation on the impact of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which analysed the economic effect of MIT alumni-founded companies and their entrepreneurial ecosystem, concluded that if the active companies founded by MIT graduates were to form an independent nation, their revenues would make that nation at least the 17th largest economy in the world. The state comptroller of New York has estimated that college and student spending directly or indirectly provides nearly 500,000 jobs and generates more than $62 billion of economic activity. The controller of public accounts in the state of Texas has estimated that every dollar invested in the state's higher education system eventually returns $5.50 to the Texas economy.
	Why are those American comparisons interesting? The United States is the most successful higher education market in the world. It is No. 1, but which is No. 2? Where is the second-favourite destination?

Richard Bacon: I will not give way. I am sorry, but I must make some progress, because I must leave time for the Minister to answer and this is only a half-hour debate.
	The UK higher education sector is a major export in a market that is set to grow rapidly. Professor Steve Smith of Universities UK told the Select Committee on Home Affairs that higher education is by some estimates the seventh largest export sector in the UK-others have put it as high as the third largest-and the market is growing by 7% a year. As the Home Secretary has pointed out, the combination of international fee income and personal off-campus expenditure by international higher education students alone already approaches £5 billion. That has become a vital income stream for universities and for the wider economy.
	As I have mentioned, Professor Edward Acton told the Home Affairs Committee:
	"In a tricky funding period, most universities plan to expand international numbers in the immediate future. The ability to do so reflects and enhances the performance and reputation of UK HE internationally: it is a Performance Indicator in international league tables. Culturally, the international student presence is key to ensuring our Home students prepare for and excel in a global graduate market".
	The UK's international alumni provide a healthy anglophile network among public and private decision makers in every one of our trading partners. The key question for universities is whether the Government intend to promote or restrict our recruitment of bona fide non-EU students in higher education. As Professor Acton stated in his submission to the Home Affairs Committee:
	"The answer might seem obvious, so forthright are No. 10, the Foreign Office and BIS on the matter and so vast are the economic, financial and cultural benefits to universities and the country."
	The Foreign Secretary announced in January that
	"as British Ministers fan out across the world in the months to come we will be promoting British education as well as our economy as a whole."
	On his recent Asian trip, the Prime Minister emphasised
	"how much we want to welcome international students to Britain"
	and that international students are a
	"great way of forming a partnership between our countries".
	Professor Acton and Universities UK fear that the UK Border Agency is set on a course which, if it is not altered, will drastically reduce legitimate higher education recruitment with a grave threat to pre-university pathway courses, which produce an income for universities of £1 billion a year. It is very important at this point to distinguish, as Professor Acton does in his paper, between sub-degree courses and pre-university pathway courses.
	The Minister will know that the international passenger survey is deeply flawed and that the Treasury Committee said three years ago that it was not fit for purpose if that purpose was to play a central role in estimating international migration. I urge him to continue engaging with the universities sector, which has offered to pay for speedy research to provide the conclusive cross-check suggested by Professor Acton in his paper. We cannot wait for several years while e-Borders gets sorted-we need action sooner than that. The Select Committee has explored these matters in depth and raised many interesting issues, such as the role of accreditation bodies and whether they should be merged, the place of post-work study and the requirement or otherwise to return to one's home country. However, I shall not dwell on those issues because there is precious little time left.
	I shall concentrate on just two issues, the first of which is pre-university pathway courses. Yesterday, I visited the highly impressive £38 million INTO building at the university of East Anglia, which provides pathway courses for 700 students each year, half of whom go on to study for degrees at the UEA and about half of whom go on to university studies elsewhere. That aspect of university provision is now a critical part of the international offer. Many countries do not have the equivalent of a second-year A-level and their students simply are not ready to start a university degree course without further preparation. In providing such preparation, universities such as the UEA are taking a sensible entrepreneurial to safeguard their future growth and to help safeguard the UK's higher education market and make sure that it prospers.
	The second issue, which relates to the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), is the importance of the English language in the mix. At a time when French universities have started offering university courses in the English language because of the richness of the potential English-language instruction market, I need hardly stress how important it is for the UK not to damage inadvertently that market in the UK. I can speak personally for the adage that there is no place to learn a language as good as the country concerned. I was a student in Berlin, where I attended lectures in English and German, and I acquired a new respect for any student studying overseas in a language that is not their mother tongue. That is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do without help. We are spoilt in the UK because English is the world's language of business and academia. We are so used to hearing a high standard of English among educated northern Europeans such as Swedes, Germans and Dutch-at the B2 standard or higher-that we assume it is easily attainable, but it is not. Those countries have invested a huge amount over many years to get to where they are now. The B2 standard of English is not often achieved in southern Europe and is seldom achieved in east Asia. Any measures that include a requirement for a B2 standard of English as a condition of entry will have a significant, damaging effect on the market for overseas students coming to the UK.
	This goes beyond language. The UEA has developed the innovative Newton programme in which overseas students come to the UK to do A-levels in the sciences, mathematics and economics in a university environment and have the opportunity to attend lectures with university undergraduates in those disciplines. That is a great way of marketing the university overseas and attracts some of the highest calibre students. If there were ever an area that cried out for joined-up government it is this.
	I really want to hear from the Minister on one issue above any other: do the Government intend to promote or reduce the UK's recruitment of bone fide non-EU students in higher education? We have to get out of a big hole. It is simply critical, at a time when the Government are asking universities to be more entrepreneurial, to seek out new customers and to offer new courses that meet the needs of those customers; and at a time when the whole economy needs a lift, which the university sector can provide, that the right hand and the left hand of our Government each know what the other is doing and that we do not inadvertently choke off what should be a crucial part of this country's recovery.